Asian Games 2023: A look at India's history-making performance

NEW DELHI: The year 2023 will go down as extremely memorable for the Indian sports fraternity as players across various disciplines came together to script history at the Asian Games held in Hangzhou this year from September 23 to October 8, helping the country touch the 100-medal mark for the first time in history.

The Indian delegation wrapped up their 19th Asian Games journey with an arbitrary number that will go down in Indian sporting history, finishing the continental meet with the largest-ever medal haul after 20 days of intense, glory-filled competition.

India finished their Asian Games 2023 campaign with a record haul of 107 medals: 28 gold, 38 silver and 41 bronze.

This surpassed India's previous record tally achieved at the last edition in Jakarta in 2018, where a 570-strong Indian squad racked up 70 medals: 16 gold, 23 silver, and 31 bronze.

Shooting led the way for India at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou with an unprecedented haul of 22 medals, which included seven golds. Athletics, headlined by Neeraj Chopra's successful title defence in the javelin throw, came in a close second with six golds, along with 14 silvers and nine bronzes.

Athletics gave the country a total of 29 medals. In the javelin throw, another talking point was Kishore Kumar Jena, who secured the silver with Neeraj with a best throw of 87.54 m.

Another major story from this discipline was that of long-distance runner Parul Chaudhary, who secured a gold medal in the women's 5000 m event after losing a gold medal in the women's 3000 m steeplechase event and settling for a silver medal.

The archery compound team, meanwhile, clean-swept the five gold medals in the category, clean-sweeping the entire category. Archery as a whole gave India a total of nine medals.

The cricket and kabaddi teams also bagged two gold medals each, while the men's hockey team's gold secured a spot at the Paris 2024 Olympics with a gold medal.

The women's hockey teams also got a bronze medal. Both men's and women's cricket teams led by Harmanpreet Kaur and Ruturaj Gaikwad secured gold medals.

Six medals came in wrestling, though none of them were gold and five were bronze. Indian boxers won a total of five medals, including four bronzes and one silver. Squash gave India a total of five medals, including two golds.

India also won five medals in rowing, dominating the sport. In this sport, newly inducted into the Olympics, the highlight was India's gold medal clash with Pakistan in the men's team category.

The Indian men's squash team of Mahesh Mangaonkar, Saurav Ghosal, and Abhay Singh clinched a gold medal after defeating Pakistan 2-1 in a high-intensity final.

With a sheer display of grit and resilience, India dug deep to wrap up the tie and clinch the gold medal, defeating Pakistan 2-1 in the best-of-three final contest.

India also bagged their first Asian Games badminton gold medal courtesy of the men's doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy.

India won three medals in badminton. India won three medals in sailing as well. Two medals also came in tennis, equestrian, chess and roller skating. In bridge, golf, wushu, canoeing, sepak takraw and table tennis, India won a medal each.

Both the medals coming in Equestrian were historic. Anush Agarwalla secured a bronze medal in Dressage Individual Intermediate I Freestyle, scoring 73.030 points. This is also the first individual medal for India in Dressage Equestrian.

Also, Agarwalla, Hriday Vipul, Divyakriti and Sudipti Hajela created history by clinching a historic gold medal after registering a huge score of 209.205 in the team Dressage. This was India's first-ever gold in this event at the Asian Games and their first gold medal in equestrian after 41 years.